UK transceiver designer Lime Microsystems and Altera have teamed up to develop a Universal Wireless Communications Toolkit that allows developers to create wireless protocols of almost any complexity, including flexible M2M and white space systems.

The combination of Lime and Altera boards enables almost any wireless application to be easily created, from consumer and enterprise broadband equipment through to bespoke white space, military and GNU Radio applications.

"We believe, this will lead to the development of novel wireless networks at fraction of the cost and time to market," said Ebrahim Bushehri, CEO of Lime. "This is the most versatile platform for the developers of current and future wireless systems; we are delighted to have partnered with Altera to extend the industry leading flexibility of their FPGA solutions to the RF domain."

Lime's LMS6002D is a fully integrated multi-band, multi-standard single-chip RF transceiver for 3GPP (WCDMA/HSPA and LTE), 3GPP2 (CDMA2000) and WiMAX applications. It can be digitally configured to operate in 16 user-selectable bandwidths up to 28MHz. In addition to small cell base stations, Lime's customers are using the IC to create machine to machine (M2M), GNU radio and white space radio applications.

Communication system designs can be quickly implement in Altera's portfolio of 28nm FPGAs, which are tailored to meet a variety of system requirements."FPGAs are well suited to address a diverse market like wireless communications, which is constantly evolving with new standards, frequency bands, size requirements and ongoing cost pressures," said Mike Fitton, senior architect in Altera's Communications Business Unit. "Leveraging Lime's Universal Wireless Communications Toolkit along with our family of tailored 28nm FPGAs allows designers to rapidly create communications systems optimized for their specific requirements."